


Vegas

by meanderingsoul



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst and Feels, Complicated Relationships, F/M, Gen, Identity Issues, Longing, Mentors, Music, Name Changes, Parent-Child Relationship, Post-Season/Series 02, Psychological Trauma, Reminiscing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-05
Updated: 2018-02-05
Packaged: 2019-03-14 00:33:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13582254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meanderingsoul/pseuds/meanderingsoul
Summary: Skye had just asked, “Why on Earth would May like Las Vegas? I get she’s got layers on layers and everything, but I can’t think of a single thing about that place that would be her scene.”She was watching him with badly hidden suspicion. She obviously believed he’d lied to get her interested in talking to him when they’d met. But Andrew really hadn’t. He’d never actually said he was talking aboutLas Vegas. He’d just said Vegas.





	Vegas

 

They were supposed to be talking about what had happened with Skye’s mother, or how Calvin Johnson was doing (besides not well), or any anxieties she might be having about Coulson’s injury or Melinda’s impending absence.

That was why Andrew had stuck around these last couple weeks, to make sure this went smoothly. Because he wanted Phil to decide whether he was more or less or equally upset about the violation of losing his hand compared to the violation of T.A.H.I.T.I so he’d start talking again and Melinda to decide S.H.I.E.L.D wouldn’t fall apart if she took enough time for herself to get her head back above water and he’d be doing both of them a disservice if he left while their protégé was struggling.

Skye wasn’t struggling the way anyone might expect. Instead Skye had brought a bowl of chips with her, was plucking at a shoelace and had just asked, “Why on Earth would May like Las Vegas? I get she’s got layers on layers and everything, but I can’t think of a single thing about that place that would be her scene.”

“Why’s that?” he replied in that unflappable tone it had taken about a decade to be any good at. “Like you said, people have layers to them. What you see and hear is rarely the whole story.”

“Uh-huh. Well, May hates crowds. And dancing. And noise. And, and watching other people do stuff. I mean, she can be still for six fricken hours straight if she wants to make a point, but like, she won’t sit through a movie. I’ve only ever caught her watching TV while running.”

A not insignificant amount of thought and observation had gone into that question. Skye was watching him with badly hidden suspicion. She obviously believed he’d lied to get her interested in talking to him when they’d met.

But Andrew really hadn’t. He’d never actually said he was talking about _Las Vegas_. He’d just said Vegas.

There was a beautiful handful of years in his memory, after they’d bought the house and he was on track for tenure at Culver and Melinda was an established level five agent, home for a few days then gone a few days most of the time, commuting north on that damn motorcycle by way of a small airport that let S.H.I.E.L.D flash badges and be on their way, because it was still the nineties and things hadn’t changed the way they would later.

And sometimes she’d be gone for weeks and he’d make the right excuses to their neighbors and so many times he’d used to know she was home because of the music pouring into the garage when he got back from campus.

It was usually not stuff he recognized. They’d never shared much taste in music. He’d never paid much attention to the songs; what mattered was that his wife was home and she’d probably like a decent hello kiss or company in the shower and definitely some real food.

Then one afternoon the music was _loud_ and when he came inside and called her name she didn’t respond and there was that familiar moment of absolute panic before he could see her standing in their living room with her hair tied up in a ponytail and that wine colored leather jacket she’d used to have.

“Melinda?” he’d said again.

She hadn’t even turned around, staring straight ahead wide eyed with a parted teeth half smile on her face. Their stereo played heavy beats with some electronic blooping and nobody singing anything.

“Mel?”

“Sh! Shhh….” She’d hissed, patting one hand sideways against his chest.

He’d just stared. She had three butterfly bandages on her face and the knuckles of the hand on his chest were bruised.

“This is _amazing_ ,” she’d said, mostly to herself.

It stayed in Andrew’s memory as one of the funniest things she’d ever done. Melinda stood in that exact spot in their living room barely breathing for almost the entire hour until the album finished. Then after dinner she’d put the cassette in her Walkman and listened to it over again, leaned over on his shoulder while he graded midterms.

That had been September 1997 and the album had been Vegas by some group called the Crystal Method and he’d come home to that damn album so often the next eight or so months Andrew still knew every track despite himself.

“What is it you think Melinda does for fun?” he asked after a moment. Either Skye would give him an opening to shift the topic or give him something to remember later.

“Besides the _obvious_ Doc?” she said with an exaggerated purr, waggling her eyebrows in a way that mostly made him want to sigh and cover his eyes.

“I’m not answering to that. You know I’m not a fan of ‘Doc’.” She still tried to trip him up with inappropriately sexual comments, an after effect of dealing with too many people burned out by the system who should have known better than to fall for it.

But Skye, though she didn’t know it, had _nothing_ on Phil before he’d decided Andrew was good enough for Melinda, or could keep up with her or whatever else had been going on inside the guy’s headspace. Conniving jackass. He’d never said a thing where Melinda could hear. First time he’d been alone with him for a few minutes Phil’d said something about her that would have made any decent person’s ears _bleed_ , but when Andrew’d gotten _livid_ he’d just blinked, smiled with what he’d later understand to be a work-face and said, “oh, good.”

First thing he’d said to him after the surgery was a sincerely mumbled, “Sorry you’ve gotten dragged back into all this.”

Skye finally shrugged. “I have no idea. Shoot weapons we’ll never actually need in the field. Tai chi, but that’s not _fun_. That’s tai chi. She’d probably like those like, rich hipster vacations where you go live in some cabin by yourself in some creepy woods and do stuff like kill bears to eat so you don’t die and no one ever finds your body.”

“That’s… very specific.”

“Fitz had some show on in the lab the other night.” Skye crunched a chip. When she shook the bowl his way he gave in and took one. It’d been a _long_ week.

“She has cool taste in music though. I guess that was the first, well second, thing that made me think she was an actual person instead of a killer robot. I mean, she didn’t know who the Glitch Mob was, but some of her stuff was pretty cool. I used to go sit up in the cockpit sometimes, so she didn’t think I still didn’t like her, back before she was my S.O. I mean.”

Andrew didn’t notice how wide he’d started smiling until Skye grinned back, wide and a little scrunched up and he was realizing he’d never seen a real smile on her before.

“What’s that face for Dr. Garner?”

“Nothing Skye. I know you would gladly fish for Melinda’s secrets all day, but let’s…”

“It’s Daisy now.”

Oh. Oh, that was telling. “Is it?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’ve decided. It’s my name. It was always my name, I just didn’t know. So, I’m gonna keep it.”

“Just the name?” he asked, because if she’d really decided to push for that, Coulson wasn’t going to stop her. There were a lot of very final decisions being made right now, and he carried a certain amount of investment in all of them, but deep down it was only the decision, the vow, he hadn’t been the one to unmake he was hoping went a certain way.

Daisy straightened up in the chair and met his eyes with the same centered resolve he’d used to see in a different face.

“Yeah. Just the name.”

If she was ready to face that, then there was really nothing left for him to say.

 

**Author's Note:**

> If you haven't ever basked in Vegas yourself, get yourself over to youtube where the full album is available.
> 
> This is I suppose a sort of stand-alone preview of three different fics I'm working on that deal with 2b and 3a. One will deal with the Skye/Daisy transition, her thoughts about her parents and heritage, and the decisions she made. One deals with the complicated relationship between Andrew, May, and Coulson. It's easy to just assume with hindsight that Coulson and Andrew didn't get on, but you don't go to someone you're estranged from for that kind of help unless you trust them implicitly. There was so much more there we never got to find out about the three of them in that period of their lives. One fic is about bereavement. 
> 
> 2b was by far my least favorite segment of Shield. I even stopped watching for a while (though that had a lot to do with not watching much tv at all at that time). I didn't dislike it so much because of the new characters or the plot points - it was the clumsy and rushed execution, the slapdash feel of everything, and the finale that should have at the least been done over four episodes instead of two. I know there were some editing issues at the time, but it led to very poor follow-through on screen. So much never got dealt with due to the time jump we had before 3a. While that did the show a huge favor moving forward into bigger and better things, here I am years later finally wanting to work through all the feelings that never got addressed in the show through fic.
> 
> Concrit is more than welcome. Andrew's pov is difficult and writing a younger Daisy feels very odd. These are pet projects for me and I'd love to hear any thoughts.  
> -M


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